


Brighter Stars

by Arke



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Earthborn (Mass Effect), Ficlet, Fluff(?), Light Angst, Love, M/M, Mass Effect 3, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-04 04:19:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18336044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arke/pseuds/Arke
Summary: Shepard and Kaidan go stargazing in a different way.





	Brighter Stars

Shepard had dreamed about those nights before.

Nights too cold for a skinny kid like him, slender fingers shivering as they curled around the frayed hem of his jacket for the smallest bit of warmth it had left to give.  Nights too dark to see beyond the next dirty alleyway, the next building with a crumbling foundation and boarded-up windows, the next cracked sidewalk that led nowhere.

Too many nights spent in the cold rain in some back alley.  Too many more nights spent alone.

Sometimes the dreams refused to remain the distant memories they were supposed to be.  Even now – even at twice the age at which that kid found himself staring up at the unforgivingly dark night sky, sitting with his back against a brick wall and legs drawn in close, running his tongue over a newly-split lip – he was nothing more than a kid searching for light in the darkness.

It all seemed so foolish now, with a galaxy stretching endlessly forward and the _Normandy_ adrift in a sea of stars.

Chasing a dream had led him to a nightmarish reality.  Shepard watched the pinhead-sized lights flicker beyond the overhead viewport, swirling blue emission patterns weaving across the black space between stars.  He closed his eyes and felt himself descend back into his bed, back into the present – back into the midst of an impossible war.  A war that spanned the galaxy itself.  A war he was not sure he could win. 

But it was a war he did not have to face alone.  He opened his eyes, watching the curious flitter of faraway lights once more.

“Hey, Kaidan… you awake?”

He felt Kaidan shift beside him on the bed.

“What?  Yeah, of course,” Kaidan answered.

“You were so quiet, I thought you’d dozed off there.”

“Hm…”  Kaidan stretched out his arms, then relaxed back into position with a satisfied sigh.  “No, just enjoying the moment.”

A moment of respite, however brief it had to be: a moment of comfortable silence shared between two brothers in arms, two men whose lives had become entwined and had been ripped apart by the same war – two men who had held each other up both on the battlefield and off.  And in the silence, Shepard listened to the sound of Kaidan’s breathing as they lay next to each other and watched the galaxy pass by, one tiny light at a time.

“I used to do this back on Earth, you know,” Shepard finally said.

“What, stargaze?”

“Yeah.  There was one place on the other side of the city.  It was some run-down, abandoned building – not uncommon for the area, really – but it had this big hole in the roof.  I’d climb up to the second floor and just lie there and… watch, I guess.

“I mean, it wasn’t the best view.  There was this haze that always hung over the city, made it hard to get the kind of view that I’d seen in the vids or, hell, even in the ads for the Alliance recruitment center on the other side of town.  But still, the brightest stars would show through and it’d be just enough to imagine a whole sky full.

“The other kids in the Reds didn’t really care too much about what I did or where I went when the day’s work was done.  So I spent more nights there than I really should’ve.  Sounds stupid now, but it was like my own little space, you know?”

Kaidan turned his head toward him, but looked away when he saw Shepard’s gaze still fixed straight ahead, as intently focused on the stars as it was for every mission.  “That’s not stupid at all, Shepard,” he said.

“Heh, yeah.”  Shepard shrugged his shoulders, feeling the mattress shift beneath him.  “At the time, it was kinda’ nice, actually.  And then one day it was gone.  I guess it’d been torn down, or maybe it’d finally collapsed, or… who knows.  There was just rubble left.”

Just rubble left.  Just like everything else.

“Spent every night after that in some halfway house I can’t even remember the name of anymore.”  He let out a low huff, a sound caught somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.  “It’s funny.  For some of those kids, all they wanted was that roof over their heads.  Me, I hated it.  I wanted to see the stars.  I wanted to feel like there was more waiting for me out there, something more than back alley drug deals and liquor store robberies.  I… I don’t know, maybe I wanted to think that my life didn’t have to sit still while the galaxy just kept going without me.”

He paused there.  The silence weighed upon the room, but he would not let himself look at Kaidan.

“I liked to think that I’d go up there someday,” he eventually said.  “That kid, the kid I was, wanted to be more.  Some days I’m still just that kid.”

That kid with ambitions too big for his slender frame, running as far and as fast as his thin legs could carry him.  That kid with dull pain perpetually twisting through his gut, his last meal a distant memory as his fingers trembled around the handle of a stolen pistol.  That kid with the split lip and bruised knuckles, fighting for his foolish pride and for the ‘Reds’ tattoo etched into skin made much too tough much too young.

That kid with eyes trained on the vast night sky, just feeling so incredibly small.

“I know how that is, Shepard.”  Kaidan shifted onto his side and propped himself up on one elbow.  “Being a kid going through hell, just waiting for your chance to get out there,” he continued, watching the way Shepard’s eyes flicked toward him for a split-second before again turning to the stars.  “But you just keep dreaming, keep watching the stars and hoping you’ll get some answers to what it all means.  And if we’re lucky, maybe the universe doesn’t have to be as big as we’d feared.”

Kaidan watched the little quirk at the corner of Shepard’s mouth and heard the soft ‘yeah’ that escaped his lips, more a sigh than a word.  Perhaps he would never know what it all meant, either; but he could be content with the simple touch, the feeling of reaching a hand out to Shepard and entwining their fingers, battle-toughened skin against battle-toughened skin.  And, if only for a moment, he let himself watch the smile grow upon Shepard’s face as he surveyed the stars.

For Kaidan, the universe was right here.  A nebula of stories in the lines embedded in Shepard’s brow.  A constellation in the freckles and scars on Shepard’s back.  A whole galaxy reflected in Shepard’s eyes – and it was beautiful.

“So how is it?” he finally asked.

“How's what?”

“Well, now that you're up here among all the stars… how’s the view?”

That kid, the kid he was, had been drawn to the stars with a force like gravity.  And out here, adrift in the endless expanse of space, now he found himself drawn to Kaidan’s eyes, shining like a sea full of stars.

With a small, barely audible laugh, Shepard turned his head toward him and answered, “Brighter than I’d ever imagined.”


End file.
